Hotshots ready for fire season

Tuesday

Wildland fires are seasonal, most occuring in the summer, and specially trained crews nationwide are ready when the time comes.

Wildland fires are seasonal, most occuring in the summer, and specially trained crews nationwide are ready when the time comes.

Dubbed "Hotshots," the crews are made up of physically fit young people with a sense of adventure. Recruited from all over the United States, they undergo special training to be certified wildland firefighters. Quasi-military in organization, they're very structured, march everywhere they go, train constantly to work as a team and move as a unit.

The Globe Hotshots, assigned to the Globe Ranger District of the Tonto National Forest, were in Georgia fighting fires there. And based in Globe the past couple of weeks are members of the Logan Interagency Hotshot Crew, whose home base is Logan, Utah. A few weeks before they arrived, a Hotshot crew from Craig, Colo., was in Globe.

Scott Bushman, superintendent of the Logan Hotshots, said that when forest fires broke out in the southeast U.S. last month, the Globe Hotshots were one of the crews available, and Hotshots travel wherever they are needed.

Who decides where they are needed?

Bushman explained that a federal agency, the National Interagency Fire Center, working with the National Incident Command in Boise, Idaho, constantly monitors conditions all over the nation and deploys resources wherever they're needed. The Logan Hotshots are one of four crews pre-positioned in central Arizona in anticipation of the summer thunderstorm season.

Hotshot crews, tankers, helicopters and catering services that set up camps and feed the crews -- everything that's needed in an emergency -- can be sent where they're most needed.

That can involve making difficult choices sometimes, Bushman noted. For instance, a more valuable resource like a timber forest would receive help before scrub oak. Water sheds, wildlife habitat, public utilities, structures, all are taken into consideration when allocating resources. Public safety always takes first priority, Bushman emphasized.

Sometimes the best choice is to just let the fire burn itself out, for example, if it was a natural fire and doesn't threaten any resources. In the fire world, it's all inter-agency, Bushman said, with cooperation between the U.S. Forest Service, Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs and Bureau of Land Management.

Other disasters are managed by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, because fires aren't the only things wildland fire crews work on.

Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, any kind of emergency, can trigger a response from the National Incident Command Center. During Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Bushman says he was helping in Texas, and after the Columbia space shuttle disaster, his crew was in Texas looking for pieces of the craft. And once, five or six years ago, there was an outbreak in Nevada of new castles disease, a contageous poultry disease that had the potential to decimate the American poultry industry. So the National Interagency Fire Center sent an incident team there to kill and properly dispose of about a million chickens, Bushman said.

City fire departments and fire districts can also help out during the fire season, which usually lasts five or six months. Personnel cross trained in fighting structural fires as well as wild fires, can be dispatched to a wildfire. Last month, for instance, Globe Fire Department had a team at the Promontory Fire near Payson for two weeks, and another staff member just returned from south Florida, where he was a team leader on a wildfire there.

Since the wildfire season only lasts five or six months, what do the young people on Hotshot crews do during the winter when they're not fighting fires? Bushman said his crews have included lots of college students, along with construction workers like seasonal carpenters, and those who like winter sports who get jobs at the ski resorts. And since they earn an average of $25,000 to $30,000 per season, some just camp on the beach in Mexico or somewhere, skuba fishing and relaxing before the next fire season.

What does Bushman do all winter? Married with family, he lives in Logan. He's been an employee of the U.S. Forest Service for 35 years and says he spends lots of time teaching classes, taking classes, program development and attending many meetings and conferences planning for the next fire season.